(no subject)

I love owning my own land at last.  I've been digging in this clay soil from one end of the county to the next county over, always planting, never keeping the soil I've created.  She's mine now, though.

I went to a local hardware store sale where they had many bushes and trees and perennials on sale at half-off.  I scored:
An honest to god cranberry bush
A good, solid grape vine (American, not European)
An elderberry bush (black lace variety)
A lightly squashed (and therefore on sale) mum
Some violas
A peony

I know that all of these varieties are extremely hardy, because they sailed through the 103+ plus heat wave while living in a parking lot and receiving semi-indifferent care. 

I'm going to spend a big chunk of tomorrow digging out a cranberry patch, somewhere, and deciding where I want my elderberries to go and what a good matching variety will be, etc.  I'm very pleased with myself. 

I also did a bit of reading about apples today and how to grow them organically, and I am ever more appreciative of my local apple orchards.  

I need to find a buddy for my elderberry and I also need to figure out whether the cranberries also need buddies or not. 

It's always been part of my plan to grow more of the food for my family--it's something I've been doing since I was a kid, and I feel more and more need to put up what I grow and provide more and more of the table.  I see the produce prices rising and rising and it's too important to leave out.  Besides, it's just who I am.  Kind of a modern move toward liberty and independence, for me, removed from the threats outside whatever they might be.